#6 of What Makes Me Think I Can Produce a Movie? Part 1

After I walked out on my cushy exec job at Cannon Films, I started my own boutique entertainment advertising company. My first client was Global Pictures, an off-shoot of Cannon. Then I started picking the independent distributors that sell less than stellar product at AFM, Mifed and Cannes. Eventually, I started doing work for Fox International - that was one of my better gigs. I was making good money but quickly tired of the routine. Even though it was creative, it wasn't creative enough. So, I decided I wanted to make the movies instead of marketing them.

Thinking I couldn't do it on my own, I took on a partner... one of my clients from one of those low-level distribution companies. She came on board with a knowledge of the international distribution and financing, which I thought would compliment my own genius on the creative side of producing. Since we had no start-up money, we financed our producing partnership with the proceeds I was earning from my advertising company. In other words, I gave her a job which entailed bringing in new clients, liaising with existing clients and taking care of the billing. Anybody see where this is going? For that, I gave her half of everything I was making.

Our first producing project was the play -- mentioned in an earlier post -- which was definitely a big success. Then, she brought in a couple of scripts written by her best friend's boyfriend. Hey, you just never know. One of the scripts was a buddy cop action comedy that was well-written and marketable (this was 1993). Against my inner voice and at the urging of my partner, we did a verbal deal with the writer to try and get the project set up.

First stop was a meeting with Walter Senior, my contact and then president of Fox International. He loved the project. Too bad Bill Mechanic had just taken over at Fox and fired his ass. And too bad Walter fell for some Israeli woman and moved to Tel Aviv and had a brain aneurism and spent a couple of years in a coma before he died. Yeah, too bad.

Next stop was Tanglewood Pictures, an independent production company owned by Chuck Norris' brother, Aaron (also my contact). From this meeting we ended up with a deal. A letter confirming $750,000 (half the budget) for the international distribution rights if we raised the other half. Who says I can't produce? I was doing the happy dance until my partner convinced me to bring the writer along to a celebratory lunch at Tanglewood. A short time after the lunch the deal was dead. I heard there was some under the table flirting going on between the writer and Mrs. Norris. And I later found out that the writer cozied up to the CFO and made a short-lived deal on a different movie. And shortly after that the company went under. I really have no idea why our deal didn't happen. It could have been any of the above or something completely unrelated... my memory fails me.

But at this point, I was beginning to wonder... why do I have a partner?